Asia Stocks recap: Feeling Wall Street’s pain

May 15, 2014, 8:33 PM ET

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Welcome to the Asia Stocks live blog, a running account of what the region’s share markets are doing, along with other news. Today, the largest pullback for U.S. shares in weeks weighs on regional bourses, with further strength for the yen loading an additional weight on Tokyo.

Japanese stocks are taking a hit from overnight losses in the U.S. and a firmer yen, with the Nikkei Average falling for the third straight day, down 1.4% to 14,080.08 to test the key 14,000 level. The Topix index is similarly weak, dropping 1.5%.

The yen, considered a safe-haven currency, is getting firmer against the dollar, with the U.S. currency buying ¥101.51 from ¥101.80 some 24 hours earlier.

Declines are across the board.

Japan Display is diving 8.7%, after the world’s largest smartphone-screen maker predicted a pretax loss of 3.2 billion yen for the April-September period of this year. Net profit for the year through March 2015 would slip 21%, the company said.

SMC Corp., which just reported a 34% climb in net profit in fiscal 2013, couldn’t escape the marketwide decline either, with its stock now trading 1.4% lower.

The markets giveth and the markets taketh away: Yesterday’s 0.3% gain for the ASX 200 is now a mere memory, with the benchmark index trading 0.3% lower this morning on the back of a weak lead from Wall Street, while deal activity has put several blue chips on a trading halt.

Among the crucial mining shares, the two biggest — Rio Tinto (down 0.2%) and BHP Billiton (flat) — are limiting losses, but others are taking a solid move lower, with Oz Minerals down 2.2%, Paladin Energy down 1.2%, Evolution Mining down 2.1%, Altas Iron down 2.6%, and Mt. Gibson Iron falling 1.9% despite Deutsche Bank raising its rating on the stock to buy from hold.

Selling of the big banks are a bit less severe, with CBA and Westpac down 0.5% each, NAB down 0.4%, and ANZ down 0.7% as the Australian Financial Review reports the bank will shut down some trading functions, including equity derivatives.

Shares of James Packer’s Crown Resorts are down 1.6%, after the firm lost out to Blackstone in the contest to buy Las Vegas casino The Cosmopolitan.

And Telstra is trading flat, with Market Matters saying weak bond yields may send investors into Telstra and other regional telecoms (according to Dow Jones Newswires).

Meanwhile Goodman Fielder remains on trading halt after Singapore-listed Wilmar and Hong Kong-listed First Pacific have sweetened their offer for the “breads and spreads” maker.

Likewise, Ioof Holdings is buying SFG Australia (its full turns out to be “Shadforth Financial Group Australia”) in an all-stock deal, with both names also untraded.

All good things must come to an end, and after six sessions of advances, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index is down 0.6% in early moves, with the H-share index of mainland Chinese majors down 0.8%. (Although beyond Hong Kong, the Shanghai Composite is flat after flirting with early gains.)

Actually, it could be worse were it not for a 0.6% gain for HSBC — the Hang Seng Index’s top-weighted component — which is tracking a more-than-1% rise for its London shares overnight.

But elsewhere, the Hong Kong market is more of a study in weakness, with Bank of China and Agricultural Bank of China down 0.9% each, Cnooc down 1.4%, China Overseas Land down 2.6%, Lenovo down 1.6%, and so forth, as the market comes under the spell of an overnight pullback on Wall Street.

Shares of Cathay Pacific are 1.6% lower, despite reporting that it and its Dragonair unit saw a combined 10% rise in April passenger traffic from a year earlier, while capacity increased by more than 6%.

Still, it’s not all losses. Sands China is up 1.1%, China Mengniu Dairy is up 0.4%, and off the benchmark index, First Pacific is up 0.8% as it and Singapore’s Wilmar said they would hike their offer price for Australia’s Goodman Fielder (currently down 2.5% in Sydney).

It’s a wild election,-fueled rally over on Dalal Street, with Indian stocks flying skyward to yet another fresh record.

In early trade, the Sensex is up 4.5%, with a 4.4% gain for NSE Nifty, as investors (both foreign and domestic) bet on a clear victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies.

The Indian rupee is loving it too, with the dollar falling below the 59 rupee level to 58.86, a full 1% drop for the day so far, according to FactSet data.

And for those hoping for such a result, the early count looks good. Reuters cites NDTV as reporting that, at this point in the day-long vote count, the BJP’s bloc is leading in 249 constituencies against just 67 for the ruling Congress party and its alliance, with 272 the number needed for a majority.

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